Still Crazy After All These Years

 Well, it's been a while, and I've got no excuse. Except maybe the pandemic, and who isn't tired of hearing about that? So let's just strike a line through that and pick up where we left off. And my shuffle tells me this is a good track to land on. 

 

 

This single came out in 1976, just after I'd left the USA to live in England for a while. (Just as Paul Simon had, before the Sounds of Silence's strange revival re-launched his career.) 

But honestly, even though Simon and Garfunkel had been so significant in my musical upbringing, at this moment in time I had lost interest. As one does. 

At the time, I probably wouldn't have appreciated Simon's world-weary folk-rock shrug about meeting an old lover. Maybe I was too young to relate to the song's duality: Between nostalgia for the past and energy for new horizons. 

But I'm older now, and wiser. And -- yes -- this song now makes total sense to me. 

And here's hoping that, whatever goes down, I remain crazy, as needs be.

"The Only Living Boy in New York" / Simon & Garfunkel

 Last week of August, New York City. Seems like everyone has decamped to the Hamptons or the Vineyard or the Jersey Shore or the Poconos or who knows where. And here I am, still in town, feeling existential.
 
And I keep coming back to this album. (See here for my take on the whole album.) Peeling back layers of the onion, still finding more to relish.

But this track -- this track, jeez -- it's here in a nutshell. The absent friends ("Tom, get your plane right on time"), the aimlessness ("I get the news I need from the weather report," and this before iPhones), the angst ("half of the time we're gone, and we don't know where, and we don't know where"), and the valiant hope ("let your honesty shine, shine, shine now"). A slacker anthem, released way back in 1970 before we'd even coined the term slacker.

This track is all Simon; Garfunkel's gone off to Mexico. Feeling abandoned, yeah, but also . . . that undertow of percussion and gospel choir . . . what if maybe, just maybe, being left alone in New York is a good thing?

Hunkering down, testing the waters. Stretching the wings. Girding up for a new chapter.

Oh yeah.

"So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" /
Simon and Garfunkel

It's my brother Holt's birthday -- as Facebook so helpfully reminded me, first thing this morning. (As if I needed reminding.)

What Facebook doesn't seem to know is that my brother Holt passed away over two years ago. "Wish him a happy birthday," the auto-generated message chirpily instructs me. Which, alas, I can't do anymore.  But I can think good thoughts about him. I think good thoughts about this guy most every day, but today, I'll indulge in a few extra.

Like wondering what his take might be on this year's campaign madness.  (I'm guessing, "Trump bad, Bernie good, Hillary really pretty good when all is considered.") I know Holt would've loved seeing Al Franken and Sarah Silverman take the podium last night. And I'm guessing he, like me, might've winced at seeing our mutual musical hero Paul Simon embarrass himself by trying to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the convention hall stage. Personally, I think the guy did a creditable job; this is one damn hard song to sing. But set that aside: It's a song whose message needs to be heard, over and over, so kudos to Mr. Simon for sucking it up and laying the thing out there.

And in tribute to my brother, and to Mr. Paul Simon, a few thoughts about another track on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was their last album, and just about every song on it alluded to their impending break-up . . . or so I now realize. Then, not so much. I thought this was a song about an architect. And yeah, if I thought about it that was kinda odd, but what did I know?

But as a farewell song, it's a beauty. It's so tender, so wistful, and just uptempo enough that you know not to despair; they're gonna be okay. That samba beat -- god, how I love a good samba -- soothes and smooths everything out.

Art (of course) is singing, at his most angelic. That lagging syncopation -- "So / long / Frank Lloyd Wright / I can't believe your song is gone so soon." He's still a little dazed by the news, isn't he? (Me too.) "I barely learned the tune / So soon / So soon..."  What I love about this song is how it sets up Wright as a visionary, WAY ahead of his time (as he was), with the rest of us just scrambling to follow. And now WE ARE LOST, with our beacon snuffed out.

Now, Simon wrote this song but Garfunkel sang it, and I'm not about to get lost in the maze of who was the visionary and who was the acolyte. I prefer to think of it as an Escher print with endless echoes and doubling-backs and leave it at that.

The verse that really comes home for me is the next one: "So long / Frank Lloyd Wright / All of the nights we'd harmonize till dawn / I never laughed so long / So long / So long." (That "so long / so long" never fails to delight.) Then I think of all the late nights my brother and I spent talking, laughing, jumping from subject to subject with lightning flashes of irrelevant relevance ... forty, fifty, sixty years of that?  Where am I ever going to find that again?

"Architects may come and / Architects may go and / Never change your point of view," Art gently remarks in the bridge. The implied message? People who change your point of view are the only people worth messing with. Amen.

Is this song about Frank Lloyd Wright?  Not necessarily. It's about another short genius ( Paul Simon) but also about his soon-to-be-ex partner Garfunkel, a math genius in a potentially architectural way. And if you're a fan of mirrors within mirrors -- Simon wrote this song for Garfunkel to sing, knowing that those soaring high notes could only really and truly be sung by that God-given voice. As the DNC performance Monday night wincingly brought home.

And "when I run dry / I stop awhile and think of you"?  That's a prescription for getting through this season of love and loss. Because the thought of my brother still refuels my tanks, and will for a long time. Forever, most likely.

"Questions for the Angels" /
Paul Simon

I've been simply haunted by this beautiful song for the past couple days. 

 

 

Paul Simon's gone through all the changes: folk music, folk rock, protest rock, world music. Thanks to my beloved older brother, I was an early Simon & Garfunkel fan, bought a guitar so I could play their songs, and clung to them through the 60s. But after 1986's Graceland he somehow slipped off my radar; even if I had been listening to the radio anymore (which I wasn't, for one reason or another), his new songs weren't getting airplay.  

  

But along came Sirius radio, which has so many channels it can afford to dig deeper, and one day, out of the blue, I was gobsmacked by this dreamy acoustic track from Simon's 2011 album So Beautiful and So What. 

 

It's mostly just Paul and his guitar (though dig the harp riff before the angel chorus), and really more art song than folk song. I love the tentative tone of Simon's world view, the mature I-don't-want-to-force-this-on-you approach. How lightly he leads us to it. "Pilgrim on a pilgrimage / Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge / Sneakers torn."  He shows us the homeless on their "cardboard blankets" -- all very PC. There's that evocative bit about "if you shout for love in a bargain store / You get what you bargained for" and the self-referential moment as he describes "an empty train in a railroad station / Calls you to its destination" -- those of us who grew up with "Homeward Bound" cannot fail to flag that reference to "I'm sitting in a railroad station / Got a ticket to my destination."

 

For good measure, he throws in an up-to-date reference in the bridge, with a vision of a Jay-Z billboard, acknowledging modern consumer culture (Paul Simon has always had an ear to the ground). This does not work if it is not poised in counterpoint to the real world. 

 

Plenty of unanswered questions float through this song, from the homeless man's "Who am I in this lonely world?" to the last verse's "If every human on the planet / And all the buildings in it / Should disappear / Would a zebra grazing in the African savannah / Shed one zebra tear?"

  

But the part that really gets me is that ethereal chorus. It's so understated -- a few plucked harp notes, a halting tempo, a shift to a higher key -- and yet musically arresting. Following that chromatic melody with its restlessly changing keys is like watching the angels dance on the head of a pin. 

 

(I can't help but wish that I could hear Art Garfunkel sing this; after all these years, it seems that that's still the angelic voice Paul Simon hears in his head.)  

 

The first time around, he poses the question "Who believes in angels?" and answers it "fools do / Fools and pilgrims all over the world." But the second time around, he admits "I do." Ranking himself with the fools and the dreamers, yes, okay, and casting his lot in with the believers in something beyond ourselves. It's a powerful message of spiritual questing, but conveyed with such finesse.

 

Yeah, I've got questions for the angels, too. I'm not one-hundred-percent sure they even exist. But the music urges me to explore further.  Letting me know that it's not all settled, that there are still issues up in the air. 

 

Because there are more things in heaven and earth, yo dog, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

So I Got to Thinking About This Album . . .

Bridge Over Troubled Water /
Simon and Garfunkel

Sometimes late at night this is the album I most want to hear.  Because when it first came out, in 1970, I was just getting old enough not to have a set bedtime; I could sit in my darkened bedroom next to my fold-up stereo listening intently to this record after midnight.  I'd been an S&G fan since Wednesday Morning 3 AM  and knew every note of edgy, arty Bookends by heart.  Bridge Over Troubled Water was pushing the envelope a bit -- what was with those panflutes on "El Condor Pasa"? -- but it seemed a no-brainer to me to study this record until I mastered its intricacies.

Turns out, the key to the whole thing was something I couldn't have known in 1970 -- that this was going to be their last record.

Only now do I realize that the whole thing was a break-up record.  No, not a romantic break-up record, but the break-up of a musical partnership/friendship that had begun when these guys were in sixth grade.  Sixth grade, fer chrissakes.  That's way longer than most marriages.

I started to reflect on this several months ago when I first wrote about "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" after the death of my brother, the original Simon & Garfunkel fan in our family.  Ever since then, I've brooded over other tracks on the LP on long solo car trips (nowadays my best listening time, since the fold-up stereo has been replaced by an iPod).  Now, I figure, it's time to do the track-by-track analysis this magnificent album deserves.

SIDE ONE

1. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" You start out with one of your greatest songs ever, not just because it's the album title track, but because . . . well, because you know the rest of the album is strong enough to follow it up.  Eventually it gets big, anthemic, with all sorts of strings and horns and crashing cymbals.  But it starts out gentle and tender AND THEN dials back down to that level a couple of times. (Ahem, Mr. Springsteen -- once you're at 11 you don't have to stay at 11.) 

Paul Simon had been listening to a lot of gospel music when he wrote this, and it shows. There's a hymnlike benevolence in that modest first verse -- "When you're weary / Feeling small / When tears are in your eyes / I will dry them all." But already the chords are modulating, and the bridge to the chorus begins to rove all over the scale, escalating the drama -- "I'm on your side / When times get tough / And friends just can't be found." That desperate-sounding last line was custom-tailored for Garfunkel's voice, seguing straight into a chorus that would deliver his greatest vocal opportunity ever.

Story is that Simon wrote the first two verses, and then in the studio Garfunkel insisted they needed a third verse. Simon grudging supplied one, which he never really liked. "Sail on, silver girl / Sail on by / Your time has come to shine / All your dreams are on their way." There's been endless speculation about who the silver girl was -- but just note how the stuff about shining and dreams is later echoed in "The Only Living Boy in New York."  I maintain that Paul Simon knew this majestic song was his parting gift to Art Garfunkel -- and a better gift he could never have given.

2. "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" A taste of Paul Simon's soon-to-come passion for world music, this one sounded so weird to us in 1970. In fact Simon just supplied English lyrics to an existing Peruvian song (okay, he didn't know it was under copyright and later had to pay the composer royalties) and it's got an almost naïve, folksong-like simplicity ("I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail" et cetera). Granted, S&G really hadn't been folksingers anymore for years. But what's it about? "Away, I'd rather sail away" -- a desire for escape, which Garfunkel sings in a yearning voice pure and clear as the mountain air of the Andes. It's effably wistful; it still sends a chill up my spine, panflutes and all.

3.  "Cecilia"  A simple chugging retro-rocker, you say?  "Cecilia / You're breaking my heart / You're shaking my confidence / Daily." (You know what a sucker I am for internal rhymes.) The girl's two-timing him, and he loves her, and he wants her back. Hmmm. And Art Garfunkel was off in Mexico, in the set of Catch-22, pursuing his acting career  ("when I come back to bed / Someone's taken my place.....")

4. "Keep the Customer Satisfied" I hardly ever think of this song, and now I'm listening to it and it is so good.  Though he disguises it as a traveling salesman's lament, being hassled by the local law ("Deputy Sheriff said to me / Tell me what you came here for, boy"), it's obviously about Simon's weariness with life on the road as a musician. "Gee but it's great to be back home," he starts out, in a descending line as if he's collapsing on the couch. And in the chorus, a rising line of semi-hysteria: "Everywhere I go / I get slandered / Libeled / I hear words I never heard in the Bible / And I'm one step ahead of the shoe shine / Two steps ahead of the county line / Just trying to keep my customers satisfied / Satisfied." These are lyrics that still run my head in the oddest situations.

5. "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright"  A song about an architect? Think again -- how about a farewell to a partner who had been studying to be an architect when their career took off? And yet (mirrors within mirrors) it's Art singing the farewell words, as if to Wright/Simon. That lagging syncopation -- "So / long / Frank Lloyd Wright / I can't believe your song is gone so soon" -- sounds dazed by the realization -- he's still scrambling to catch up. "I barely learned the tune / So soon / So soon..."  But the verse that really comes home for me is the next one: "So long / Frank Lloyd Wright / All of the nights we'd harmonize till dawn / I never laughed so long / So long / So long." (You know me and word play; that "so long / so long" never fails to delight.) I think of all the late night conversations I've had with people I truly loved -- my brother, my college friends, fellow writers, music buddies -- laughing, jumping from subject to subject with lightning flashes of irrelevant relevance. And I'm suddenly overwhelmed by nostalgia for it, and envisioning the late nights Paul and Art must have spent together, sharing their lives for so long. "When I run dry / I stop awhile and think of you" -- what a beautiful statement about how we need other people, the partners in our life work that feed our wellsprings. "Architects may come and / Architects may go and / Never change your point of view," Art gently remarks in the bridge. The implied message? People who change your point of view are the only people worth messing with. AMEN.

What a beautiful sentiment. And yet . . . . it's a valedictory sentiment, a magnificent farewell gesture. But a farewell all the same.

SIDE TWO

6. "The Boxer"  Okay, this one was written much earlier, in 1968, and was released as a single in 1969, so technically it doesn't have to fit the break-up theme.  But while it's ostensibly about a prize fighter, it's really a musician's road song.  He complains about leaving his home, about being in the company of strangers, about railway stations -- it's "Homeward Bound" redux. And that battle-scarred figure in the clearing, isn't that weary, self-pitying Paul Simon?

7. "Baby Driver"  Another earlier song, the B-side of the "The Boxer." But lo and behold, even though it's in many ways a throwaway retro rock-n-roller, what's that refrain about "hit the road and I'm gone"?  It's about a sheltered kid longing to break out, restless for adventure -- sounds like somebody's jonesing for a solo career.

8. "The Only Living Boy in New York" Perhaps the most poignant song on a album jam-packed with poignancy, which is why it crops up still in movie soundtracks (Garden State, The Normal Heart).  It's addressed to someone called Tom (Simon & Garfunkel were originally a duo called Tom and Jerry) who's flying down to Mexico, which is where Garfunkel was filming Catch-22. ("I know your part'll go fine . . ."). And there's Simon shuffling around his apartment, watching TV, feeling existential.  Wanting his friend to succeed ("I know that you've been eager to shine") and at the same time consumed by jealousy and loneliness and urban neurosis.  If this isn't the last straw in their relationship, it's pretty damn close.

9. "Why Don't You Write Me"  Another uptempo throw-away? Maybe. But it IS about broken communication and loneliness and an edge of despair. "Why don't you write me / A letter would brighten my loneliest evening / Mail it today / If it's only to say / That you're leaving me." Break-up Alert!!!

10.  "Bye Bye Love"  Not even an original song, but an old Everly Brothers chestnut. But hey, it's probably something they sang in their early Tom and Jerry gigs, and what's it about?  A break-up.  The singer has been betrayed by his girl ("There goes my baby with someone new / She sure looks happy / I sure am blue") and he's saying goodbye -- not to her (she's toast) but to the happiness of being in a relationship.

Which reminds me -- I recently read an interview with Simon in which he admitted that he's addicted to vocal harmonies, that he still hears harmonies whenever he writes a new song. Is this because he spent his formative years in a vocal duo, or is that why he stayed in that vocal duo for so long?  Because, let's be honest, even in 1970 we S&G fans were aware that Paul Simon was bringing most of the talent to the partnership. And yet, and yet . . . the one thing Garfunkel added was something so special, so ethereal, that Simon can be forgiven for not wanting to jettison it. I do not believe he stuck with Art Garfunkel out of habit or fear, but because he was hooked on the beauty of those harmonies. And really -- who wouldn't be?

11. "A Song for the Asking"  Listening to this song, I'm bowled over, all over again. What a beautiful valedictory coda, delicately sung by Simon.  We always think that the sweetness all came from Art, but no, Paul brought it too.  He's laying this tender little tune at his friend's feet, and with a touching humility:  "Thinking it over, I've been sad / Thinking it over I'd be more than glad / To change my ways / For the asking / Ask me and I will play / All the love that I hold inside."  Okay, yeah, sure, Paul may have written this for his first wife Peggy, whom he'd only recently met.  But this mood of vulnerability and anxiety must have also been due to his faltering partnership with Art.  Putting it at the end of the album, of course, makes it a bookend to the anthemic majesty of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," signaling a new direction. And hey, to end this Simon and Garfunkel album with what is, to all intents and purposes, a Paul Simon solo song?   Hasta la vista, brother.
  

"So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" /
Simon and Garfunkel

So who invented this National Sibling Day?  I've never heard of this bogus holiday before -- yet now suddenly, today, everybody and their brother are posting all over Facebook these happy smiling pictures of them with their sibs.

And I'm one sib short and it makes me incredibly sad.

So here's a song that I've lately found makes me feel better.

I had already put this on my Holt playlist, but the day I was cleaning out his apartment and put his iPod in the iDock for iShuffle iListening, I was delighted to hear so many S&G tunes in his library. Flashback to our teenage years, when, even before The Graduate made "Sounds of Silence" so iconic, Holt had introduced me to Wednesday Morning 4 AM and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I bought a guitar just so I could pick out those tunes (painfully, I might add). We were NEW Folkies, which these days would be labeled Indie Rock. Whatever. It wasn't Peter Paul and Mary, that's all we knew.

Jump forward to 1970, when Holt had gone off to college, leaving me at home in Indianapolis to carry the torch. Bridge Over Troubled Water was their last album, and just about every song on it alluded to their impending break-up . . . or so I now realize. Then, not so much. I thought this was a song about an architect. And yeah, if I thought about it that was kinda odd, but what did I know?

But as a farewell song, it's a beauty. It's so tender, so wistful, and just uptempo enough that you know not to despair; they're gonna be okay. That samba beat -- god, how I love a good samba -- soothes and smooths everything out.

Art is singing, at his most angelic. (If nothing else, this album forever stands as his finest singing ever.) That lagging syncopation -- "So / long / Frank Lloyd Wright / I can't believe your song is gone so soon." He's still a little dazed by the news, isn't he? (Me too.) "I barely learned the tune / So soon / So soon..."  What I love about this song is how it sets up Wright as a visionary, WAY ahead of his time (as he was), with the rest of us just scrambling to follow. And now WE ARE LOST, with our beacon snuffed out.

Now, Simon wrote this song but Garfunkel sang it, and I'm not about to get lost in the maze of who was the visionary and who was the acolyte. I prefer to think of it as an Escher print with endless echoes and doubling-backs and leave it at that.

And anyway, the verse that really comes home for me is the next one: "So long / Frank Lloyd Wright / All of the nights we'd harmonize till dawn / I never laughed so long / So long / So long." (You know me and word play; that "so long / so long" never fails to delight.) Then I think of all the late nights my brother and I spent talking, laughing, jumping from subject to subject with lightning flashes of irrelevant relevance ... forty, fifty years of that?  Where am I ever going to find that again?

"Architects may come and / Architects may go and / Never change your point of view," Art gently remarks in the bridge. The implied message? People who change your point of view are the only people worth messing with. Amen.

Is this song about Frank Lloyd Wright?  No, it isn't. It's about another short genius. Yes, Paul Simon. And the idea that Simon had Garfunkel sing this song, which could be construed as a paean to his own genius, makes me grin.

But the beauty of Garfunkel's singing? I'm inclined to say he had the last laugh.

And "when I run dry / I stop awhile and think of you"?  That's a prescription for getting through this season of love and loss. Because the thought of my brother still refuels my tanks, and will for a long time. Forever, most likely.

Another Shuffle for Holt

Because that playlist just has too many great tunes not to go for another round.

1. "American Tune" / Paul Simon (1973)
"I don't know a soul who's not been battered / I don't have a friend who feels at ease / Don't know a dream that's not been shattered / Or driven to its knees" -- yep, that's life, and Paul Simon's never been afraid of facing that down. My brother the minister got that, too. Best part of this song -- where he dreams that he's dying, and he flies, freed from his mortal bonds, over the Statue of Liberty. The song breaks free of its gentle melodic patterns (stolen from Bach, I feel compelled to note) and soars into another realm of consciousness.

2. "The Weight" / The Band (1968)
Surely I'm not the only one who finds something Christlike about the singer of this song, wandering into town to "take a load off Fanny / And put the load right on me." And after meeting all the characters in town, he takes his wistful fare-thee-well -- "My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time." Holt had this album, Music From Big Pink, though it took me years to figure out why these guys were worth listening to. They may have been a Canadian band, but they took their cue from Appalachian folk music, and from thence all the great Scots-Irish folk songs, in which the spectre of death is ever-present.

3. "Drive South" / John Hiatt (1988)
I've bragged here about how I knew Johnny Hiatt, growing up in Indianapolis, but my brother knew him better than I did, and was just as astonished as I was when we discovered he'd become not just a rock star but a genuine artist. I took Holt to see JH for his birthday a few years go, and he saw him a few more times after that. So you know there had to be at least one Hiatt tune on the playlist. I love this one for three reasons: 1) It's about driving, and Holt loved driving (Indy, natch); 2) It's a sexy seduction song ("Don't bother to pack your nylons / Just keep those pretty legs showing / It gets hot down where we're going")  and my brother, he loved the ladies; and 3) "drive south" may be a metaphor for going to hell. My brother worked a powerful lot of good in his life, but he was no saint, and who knows how tough the grading system is at the pearly gates?  But if he's headed to hell, then hell's a reasonable option for us all.

4. "The Cape" / Guy Clark (1995)
The first time I heard Guy Clark sing this song, all I could think of was my brother, and how much he loved to dress up in costumes as a kid. And yes, like the hero of this song, even when he was old and grey, people still thought he acted like a kid. But as Guy puts it, "he's one of those who knows / That life is just a leap of faith / Spread your arms and hold your breath / And always trust your cape." Brilliant song that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

5. "Don't Forget Me" / Marshall Crenshaw (1995)
Here's a two-fer: Marshall Crenshaw AND Harry Nilsson, who wrote this tender wry song. I don't know if Holt shared my Nilsson obsession, but I know he loved Nilsson's oddball animated movie The Point when it first came out; in hospice, Holt smiled when I played him my Nilsson playlist. Although this is basically a song to an ex-wife, we can extrapolate the sentiments to any loves from the past. Even the spookily apposite verse three: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now / Come on, get happy / Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." Amen.

6. "Miles From Nowhere" / Cat Stevens (1970)
Tea for the Tillerman was an inescapable album that year, full of folky riffs and mordant black humor. Perfect soundtrack for Harold and Maude, a movie Holt loved for its warped fascination with death. Many songs on this album are about fathers and sons (I watched that battle from a front row seat) and taking journeys. But the line that really resonates here? "Lord my body has been a good friend / I won't need it when I reach the end." And so we told Holt in the hospice -- time to turn in the loaner car, it's reached the end of its usefulness.

7. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
For a Methodist minister, having "Losing My Religion" as your ringtone was a pretty gutsy move, doncha think?

8. "Don't Forget About Me" / John Mellencamp (2010)
Our other homegrown Indiana talent, Johnny Cougar nee Mellencamp always held a special place in our hearts. From his stellar back-to-basics album No Better Than This, another ex-wife song that can, if you squinch your eyes just so, be re-interpreted to apply to an old beloved friend who's moved to another plane of being.  

9. "Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World" / Israel Kamakawiwo Ole (1993)
One song we all agreed had to be played at Holt's memorial. Because, no matter how often it's played, this lilting ukelele rendition of the old standards transforms them into something new and hopeful and uplifting.

10. "Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys (1964)
It was Holt, not me, who owned all our Beach Boys albums. (Note that possessive "our," because I listened to them just as avidly as he did.) In the face of the British Invasion, he never gave up on their American counterparts. In 1966, our family took a cross-country train trip to California that gave us our one taste of golden SoCal surf summer, before the Monkees and the Summer of Love happened. In my mind, this glorious Beach Boys ballad sums it all up -- how we keep the warmth of the sun inside us, to survive grief and loss. Interesting to note that Brian Wilson and Mike Love began to write this song on November 22, 1963, but didn't finish it until the tragic events of that day -- the Kennedy assassination, for those of you too young to have been permanently scarred by this event -- had happened. So the elegiac tone of this song was no accident. Those exquisite chord changes, the vocal counterpoints, and above all Brian's heart-melting falsetto -- they make me weep, make me smile, make my heart swell in my chest. Magic.

Cleaning out my brother's apartment, I found his iPod and put it in the dock to play on shuffle while I folded clothes and emptied drawers. How lovely it was to hear his own curated inventory of music! It was as if he were in the room with me. Expect to hear more from that source....

“Love” / Paul Simon

28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS

Paul Simon keeps on surprising me. It’s been a long time since, as half of Simon & Garfunkel, he defined an era -- I’ll never forget being riveted by the trailer to The Graduate, with that delicately finger-picked opening of “Sounds of Silence” playing over Dustin Hoffman’s blank face. Simon’s chiseled portraits of alienation and despair (“I Am A Rock,” “The Boxer,” “Homeward Bound,” “A Hazy Shade of Winter”) were just what my disaffected teenage soul needed. I drank up every album thirstily; so did all of my disaffected friends.

Simon stayed in the game even after he went solo, but only just, and after Graceland he fell off my radar. I can’t even remember how this song filtered onto my iTunes -- it’s from his 2000 album You’re the One, which must have come after the spectacular failure of his musical Capeman, but despite the fact that it went gold and won a Grammy nomination, it never reached my ears. Yet this sneaky little track has been burrowing into my brain lately. The jazz-tinged guitar work, the supple Brazilian percussion, draw you in, tease you along – and then those devastating lyrics punch you in the gut.

If Joe Tex was playing a street preacher, Simon is our Professor Emeritus of Love, lecturing wisely on human need. He begins with a first-person example: “Cool my fever high / Hold me when I cry” – yes, love does have its purpose, his empirical research will support that. But then the melody plunges into monotone as he confesses, “I need it so much.” Oh, yes, he knows this feeling, and he doesn’t like it. He drops into a spoken-word rant as he describes love’s general effect: “Makes you want to get down and crawl like a beggar / For its touch / And all the while it's free as air / Like plants, the medicine is everywhere.” Free? Everywhere? Why is that not reassuring?

Then, out of it all, the chorus rises like a phoenix – just the clearly sustained word “love,” repeated three times, over a cresting scale of guitar work that’s suddenly shifted into major key. Yes, yes, love is the answer, you want to call out – until Simon knocks our legs out from under us, going back into minor key as he dourly reminds us, “We crave it so badly / Makes you want to laugh out loud when you receive it / And gobble it like candy.” That’s oddly pictorial; I see him laughing, I see him gobbling – and it’s weirdly arousing.

Simon’s not going to let us off the hook, is he? He switches back into major key and adopts a simpler pop rhythm in the bridge, but only to toy with us again: “We think it's easy / Sometimes it's easy / But it's not easy.” (Now there’s some shrewd, subtle songwriting for you, the less-is-more mark of a master). “You're going to break down and cry,” he wags a warning finger at us, and then throws in another smack upside the head for good measure: “We're not important / We should be grateful.” Talk about putting things in perspective.

In the last verse, he goes global on us, talking about evil walking the planet, about “the master races, the chosen peoples / The burning temples, the weeping cathedrals” – makes you feel like a schmuck for fretting over your own pitiful little love life, doesn’t it? And yet Professor Simon has already wearily signed our pass/fail slip – all right, there’s no grade, just show up for class so you can earn the credit, okay?

We can’t help craving love, that’s the way we’re built -- he knows that, and now we know it too. Yup, Paul Simon is still way ahead of me on the disillusionment spectrum. It's like coming home to find that out.

Love sample